I think the victim role can be hard to get out of because there are also benefits involved with it. I get attention that I've ''never gotten before''. I get sympathy. I don't have to ''work as hard. There are less expectations on me. I can explain for my ''failures'' because ''I was abused''. I don't have to try hard, I might be afraid of success. The list goes on and on. But then that brings me to, why the hell do I have to explain anything to anybody, it's none of their business what I do with my life anyway.

You bring up some great points here and I know for so long I wanted to play the victim card. It wasn't until recently that a classmate, whom I had disclosed too, had said to me be careful not to let myself define my whole existence by this one single event. Yes I know those are words that are easier said than done, and yes I struggle with this, but your right it isn't anyone's business what you do with your life.

I think the biggest thing for me is realizing I'm a good fucking guy and I'm so much more!!!. I'm so much more than one single fucking event.

I think it's great your realized this and are able to talk about, talk about progress in your recovery.

Hi Sportinrocks. There are benefits to sympathy. I don't tell many people I was abused, not even my closest friends. But, I'm very thin, I still look like a twenty-year-old, I'm shy. When I'm in a bind, I use what I have. I'll play weak. I'll play dumb. I'll play naive. In the end, though, it hurts you. If people think you're helpless, they'll use you, they won't respect you, you're bosses at work won't promote you, thinking you can't handle the responsibility. Plus, all that attention isn't as sweet as it seems. Trust me, once you leave the room, the bitterness and resentment comes out. I see it in my office. I'd say about 90% of all compassion is fake. It doesn't make sense to exaggerate the effects of the abuse, because someone who hasn't been abused would never believe how bad it really is. Their egos wont let them. They'll never admit that their own lives are so precarious, that, had they been abused, they wouldn't overcame everthing that's destroying you. That's why I keep the abuse to myself. You're right. It's none of their business.

Well all my other experiences and not just the CSA put me into the victim role, I'd taken enough at 18 so I didn't play the victim nearly so much after that when it came to friends. It's taken therapy to stop putting up with it from family though.

I absolutely refuse to ever! play the visual imparement card, so I was shocked when i realized I was using my abuse as an excuse, ---- (I don't go round telling people), not to others, to myself.

The problem is, how to separate excuse from genuine effects of depresssion I don't kno.

Yes, i'm in a mess, ---- but who's fault is it really mine? my abusers' someone else's? ---- just life and society?

I'm not sure. I know it frustrates me that I have to work so much harder at things than anyone else because of lack of site, ---- but this is frustration more than anyone else.

The other day I saw a uni production with a really good tenor. I found myself becoming deeply jealous.not of the fact that he was extremely good snse I know that just takes practice, ---- but that he could then walk into any performing group he liked and get taken on merrit, where as for me I'd always have to go through the "yes, I am fine on stage" business, and "wah he's blind" which is just too much extra work.

Do I feel the same frustration about being abused? ---- yes.

When I think about my friends are their relationships, ---- and how for them it's simply another very pleasant part of life compared to my feeling of s/x, ---- hell yes! I feel frustrated.

Is this an excuse not to try and solve the problem? --- well no, but i have to admit that feelings' there and not going away.

When I think about compassion, I think there's an edge of hardness to it, --- -a sort of ability to think about what's best for the person involved, to take their good as yours, ---- which may involve telling the truth, even when it's a truth the person doesn't want to hear. simply going into floods of tears over something doesn't help anyone unless they lead to something useful to the persons' life.

It's this sort of honest compassion that i'd like to try and learn for myself, ---- though I'm rather bad at it, and it's this sort of compassion that I think about when I think about the victim excuse line.

I so relate to using the abuse as the reason I am where I am today, not able to work, recovering drug addict... that kinda thing. All the not-so-great things I have done I can say I did because I was abused as a child. And maybe its true, I mean maybe I would be some well-off person if I'd of had a normal childhood. Certainly I wouldn't be in such a mess.But...I think the 'benefit' of the abuse for me is that its my excuse for not doing anything about it. I don't have to try to get better, I dont have to try to make something of my life because 'there is no point'. because 'I was screwed from the moment I was born' and 'THEY messed me up THEY did this to me so THEY should fix it, not me', and the all powerful 'I can never get over this, I can never be happy, I can never lead a normal-ish life. So I'm not gonna try'. And really, people who know my story in real life (not too many) don't expect much from me. They put up with all of my crap. They let everything slide. Because they 'know what i've been through'. And that is a powerful position to be in. i guess.

I have played the victim so many times over the year. I never gave myself 100% for anything positive. The only time I seemed to succeed is if I got angry enough that I would push through it. But that only worked for so long. I was so dried up from all the anger that I couldn't even use that anymore.

I was talking with my wife today about this. She told me that she could see in me that I would only go so far and then I would just give up. She had said these things to me in so many different ways throughout our 18 years together but today I could finally listen to what she said and own up to it. I admitted that I would sabotage myself because I needed to punished for what happened to me.

Today is a new day with new knowledge. I realize that I can't and won't let those one or two events define me.

_________________________
Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

I see no benefits to being a victim. I try as hard as I can every day and I only get kicked in the balls for it.

I don't know what playing the victim is. If you were a victim you are not playing at it. You may be trying to allude to not trying your best when you could and excusing this failure by blaming the abuse. Or you may have used the abuse to manipulate others, that might be called playing the victim card.That phrase is something that is used to accuse not to self identify. That is the only way I've ever heard it before. The accuser is always someone who cannot make me see things their way after I ask for help or something similar, because of not having thought out the "pearl" of wisdom they are usually just spitting out at me and trying to get past as quickly as possible, and they accuse me of deliberately not understanding them by saying I am playing at victim. Its them not me. Its the fact that real thought would open their minds to things that frighten them and in most cases like that completely undermine the basis of their raison de tre.Any unconscious affect of abuse as Charlie24 describes it is not playing at victim it is a legitimate effect of the abuse that Charlie overcame when he was able to. You may think it is something you could have done sooner but you see it when you see it and you fix it when you fix it. Thats life.

I've never been given sympathy or any of the other dubious benefits you mention Sportintrucks. Thanks for this post as I needed to say something and I didn't know what it was until now.

_________________________
As Mark Twain once quipped, history may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.

Wow, kidneythis. I really needed to read what you wrote. I have used my abuse to manipulate in the past which is something I am working hard to change. But I also need to come to grips with what you said about the accuser.

I also needed to read "...you see it when you see it and you fix it when you fix it. Thats life". I have seen it and I am fixing it.

_________________________
Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

I re-read this post and I really like what everyone had to say. kidneythis I like what you added to this post. Very powerful. I thought of a few more things about this topic.

Sport you talk about how life is easier, you don't have to work as hard, you get passes in life.

Well that may be work short time and these may be benefits that work short time, but in the long run if you feel like you are playing the victim card so to speak I truly believe people will catch on and will get over you and will finally realize what you are doing. People will realize that they don't want to associate themselves with you and will eventually cut you out of your life. Maybe not everyone, but I believe the majority will.

I just realized one more thing, I think it's so imperative in our recovery to eventually realize we can do multiple things, we can continue to blame our abuser or abusers and say everything that has gone wrong in our lives is other people's problems and faults or we can get to the point were we realize we can make a new life for ourselves and start over, luckily our abuse didn't kill us, so here in a way is a second chance to start over. Great thoughts everyone.

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